Audiences were challenged to think; invited to imagine; and moved to laugh by Midrand’s budding young public speakers at the recent Chatterbox Impromptu Speech Festival.  The annual festival, which rotates venues amongst participating schools, was hosted by Kyalami Preparatory School (KPS) recently. It had been on a hiatus due to Covid since 2020; but has returned with success due to the efforts of KPS coordinators Beverly Chalmers and Heidi Lawrence.

“Seeing the children’s creativity was one of the highlights of the evening. The fact that they can just do something within half an hour that other people would want more time to prepare for is impressive,” said Chalmers. “It was also nice to see the different styles of presentation and the different approaches from the different schools.” “There is no winner or loser. It’s about collaboration more than competition,” said Chalmers.  Christchurch Preparatory School; Carlswald House Preparatory School; and Beaulieu Preparatory School were the visiting schools. The speakers were given about thirty minutes to prepare their speeches on given topics. Speakers and their families then moved to different venues in the school to deliver their work. They were grouped by grade.

“When the children got to the front, how they started their speech gave us an idea of how they were feeling. If they began their speech with a joke, you could tell they were going to be humorous. If they seemed serious, I could tell they were going to tell us something educational,” says grade 7 pupil Nkateko Maphokga, who was one of the hosts.  “It was a fun experience and I was very impressed by some of the speeches.”